Texas Democrats Leave The State To Save It | Strategy Session

When Trump called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to demand he find more seats for Republican victories in ‘26, Abbott said, “Sure.” Of course, this isn’t how redistricting is done. Generally, you redistrict after the census arrives every decade because you have a mathematical imperative. Over the previous ten years, your state’s demographics likely shifted somewhat. People moved from here to there, some districts gained significant numbers, and some maybe lost numbers. You have to account for that.

So what the Republican-controlled Texas legislature is doing is cynical and corrupt on its face. There is literally no other reason to redistrict in this moment than to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

And, as Bobby Jones said in today’s episode of Anchor Watch (which you really should watch if you haven’t already), guess who lives in most of the districts Republicans are targeting?

Did you guess Black and brown people? Ding!

One huge problem with this mess is that it’s not necessarily isolated to Texas. Texas is just the precedent-setter. It’s the first. The canary in the coal mine. And it’s a strategy that leads to less democracy and less self-governance. So what if California or New York follows suit, as they have already said they would? Was our system built to lock out half of our voting electorate from participating in its own governance?

Well.

Not exactly. Not in principle, anyway. You could argue that the founders failed to include more than 50% of us when they built this system. Women and non-whites were not meant to have a voice back then. But it’s ridiculous to use such an argument now. Not even they would admit to a stated goal of disenfranchising women and non-whites (like … they wouldn’t admit to it, anyway).

Republicans have one stated justification: give Donald Trump power. And now Democrats are using the same tactic to achieve the opposite goal. But the cure for gerrymandering isn’t more gerrymandering.

But it might be all we’ve got right now.

Joe Trippi & Jeff Timmer break it all down. As strategists, they’ve both at least wished they could choose their voters in a tight race. And, in fact, Timmer took part in partisan gerrymandering in Michigan and witnessed firsthand its destructive force on our Democracy.

In this episode he offers up a mea culpa, not unlike Stuart Stevens’ from last week, which happens to be our most popular video of all time. Check it out HERE

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